


king minus crown

by carained



Category: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Genre: Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, canon-typical relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-19
Updated: 2017-04-19
Packaged: 2018-10-21 02:06:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10675464
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/carained/pseuds/carained
Summary: the world is his kingdom and it’s staging a revolution.





	king minus crown

he says he can’t feel anything, certainly not love. makes sure to layer the implication of _choosing_ solitude thick and heavy, enough to bury what he’d realized years ago, that people cannot find love in him. but sometimes he slips up and there are cracks in his mask, cracks you put there with your adoration and loyalty. the little actions that mean big feelings that mean his face splinters into something resembling sincerity. sometimes he accepts you love him and “i love you” slips through one of the cracks you made and he burns with the intensity of it. his fingers are flames across your skin because he’s not content to be the only one burning alive, he needs his plus one into hell. at some point, his grip tightens to remind you he won’t love anything tomorrow.

he calls the way he looks at you a power play. he says the way he gasps out your name keeps his heel on your throat and your heart in his fist. he almost makes you believe it until his assertions become a screech and you realize he knows his grasp on everything is slipping.

the world is his kingdom and it’s staging a revolution. you wonder what it’s like to tout your fury only to find out you were never feared, merely tolerated until you weren’t. he’ll be immortalized in trivia questions about the exact number of plates he destroyed in a rage. a historical footnote, an oddity, which he will see as a mockery, which he will feel is worse than dying.

he will scream about his legacy that doesn’t exist to people who don’t care until he loses his head and it rolls into a basket, apoplectic and purple. you will still cling to him then. you will cling to him even as loving him earns you a place in the same guillotine. you won’t renounce him, even though you should, even though it’s right, because he has always been your sin. it’s fitting he is your last one. he’d like that.

you mean it when you say you hate him. you mean it when you say you love him, too. _he_ means it when he says he’s a god, means it even as he is dragged and killed like a man. _like an animal_ , you think, but do not say. he’d talked about animals, ruthless and primal and predator and wolf, but this isn’t what he meant. he was meant to be the hunter, not the caged and slaughtered. you were never meant to be ruthless and primal and predator. you were never even meant to be a good son. all you had to be is a good catholic, but lately you’ve been praying to a god in a cell with an expiration date.

you wanted to tell him you loved him, before he died. you wanted to tell him this was his fault. but when you saw him, he was spitting and growling and pacing. you think _primal_ for a moment, but it’s not. you amend _primal_ to _feral_. he’s not an apex predator, he's a stray with rabies. his death isn't a systematic removal of the competition, like he's telling you. it's putting down a sick pet. it's mercy.

**Author's Note:**

> [arrives five years late to my angsty pretentious teen writing phase with macdennis]
> 
> this is an extended metaphor that should be one page of out fifty, but the other forty nine pages aren't getting written, so.


End file.
